What the hell is stepping???

[jpe20]

Hi folks,

Having been mystified to what people in the oc threads call stepping I decided to try and find out as much as I could myself about it. It all seems related to those 3 codelines on your CPU lid. I would like to know exactly what people refer to as stepping as it seems to me a method of trying to id certain batches of cpus. The ability to do this is somewhat pointless to a certain extent as you generally have no control over exactly which cpu you get unless you physically go to a local pc shop and stand there for ages writing down codes and going home and checking them on the web. Or you can I guess keep rma'ing cpus until you get one you like!!!! (likely to annoy suppliers!!). There seem to be 2 steppings people refer to (1) is the 4-5 digit code at the beginning of the 2nd codeline ..mine is LDB4F (any good??) and the other (2) is the stepping reported in CPUz etc like E4 (what this means??)

Anyhow I did some googling and got the following for my CPU.....
Ok the full codes on my processor are ....
ADA3800IAA5CU
LDB4F 0626XPdw
xxxxxxxG60588

xxxxxxx=no. witheld for privacy

What I have found so far...
[1st codeline]
ADA = Athlon XP
3800 obvious
I=Package type guess I=AM2
A=Maximum voltage=A=variable
A=Max temp=a=variable
CU=Part definition=Stepping ??(dunno), dual core, 0.09 micron, socket AM2-----guess

So the first line is straightforward bar the CU bit ... other Part definition codes have been defined as having E4 stepping etc what this means????

[2nd codeline]
LDB4F =Cryptic to me sure the digits mean something ... this is the "stepping" people seem to refer to. Indicator of some kind of batch number I guess
0626=manufactured year 06 week 26 easy
XPdw=Cryptic to me sure the digits mean something ...

All I can glean from the 2nd line is date of manufacture.

[3rd codeline]
xxxxxxx=probably a wafer id number
G6=Some sort of sort code binning number
0588=last 4 digits I assume is the cpu number on that particular wafer (how many cpus on a single wafer these days???? I dunno is 1000ish a reasonable no??)

There we have it what I understand so far what the numbers mean. Feel free to chip in lol.... maybe this should be a new thread?

Jules

 

[Jokester]

It's the second line your interested in, the first 5 digits as you say are what people refer to as the stepping, the week number and the last 4 digits (identifying what day of the week or something along that lines as far as I'm aware) also give you information that can be used to identify how your CPU is likely to perform as chips with the same information for all of them are very likely to perform to withing a few MHz of each other.

Jokester

Edit: The E4 refers to the version of the core design as AMD enhance or add in new features to a specific core design.